Run
by thecrystalnight
Summary: Eight seconds separate you and the bullet.
1. Chapter 1

"_Run"_

_Eight seconds separate you and the bullet._

**xXx**

**Prologue.**

Eight seconds ago, you had the world groveling on the caps of its knees. Eight seconds ago, you had been little Dally Winston, too large for your own brilliant shadow, untouched, untouching, untouchable. Eight seconds ago, you had known none equaling your brilliance. Eight seconds ago, you had your fuse, your own little light, youth—that amusing little flare of light that burns ferociously inside the lassitude of darkness. The blue endlessness of your eyes had held no shame; the snow of your smile had seduced the wits of all but the hardiest.

Flash forward to zero hour. Eight seconds separate you and the bullet.

You begin to tumble: so begins the fucking bullet.

Your blood sloshes in your veins. The eight seconds have passed. Now you are a vessel waiting to be shipwrecked. You are a bomb, waiting. You are the thrill of the spill, waiting. You are an overturning car, twisting, bucking, waiting, breathing heavily in eager fucking anticipation of the crash. Thinking about the moment you crack open, spilling, falling, crashing—sweet Lord, there is something goddamned erotic about the wait.

It knocks before it enters, Dally.

**xXx**

**Chapter One.**

Eight seconds separated you and the street below the high-rise. The morning sky glowed an ambivalent Brooklyn band—where the buildings, dipped in blue halo, trembled within vague and pulsing sunlight—and from the clothesline ending at your flat window, a sea of white undershirts stirred slowly with the breath of dawn. Somehow, the gentle morning wind licked your face; you felt the bitter tongue caress you. Your nerves rose as fire from beneath your skin, bubbling oil instead of sweat. God damn. When you were new to the planet, everything hurt. Your mother's kisses had been knives running their flat, hungry sides along your waiting cheeks. Roses that she had placed so effortlessly on the flat windowsill reeked of gasoline. You shivered in your bed during the pit of the night, certain that the needles within the mattress craved the flesh of your spine.

Eight seconds now separated you and your nine-year-old body. Eight seconds, and you were looking down at your release, the eternity of a broken Brooklyn street.

The doorhinges clicked. Your mother came in, made a silent gasp with her eyes, and screamed at you, and pulled you away. Your hypnosis burst apart at hearing her voice, like a bubble landing promptly upon a pinhead.

She had warned you about that window. She had warned you, but did you listen? No. Did you listen the night before, when she had ironed all of your clothes, and the smoke of your cleanliness withered her, and made a cheap cornflower dullness of her expensive blue eyes? No. Did you listen the night before that, when you said you had "accidentally" dropped that rotting bag of oranges out the window? No. Did you listen last night, when she had downed a bottle of your father's sorrow, when she had laughed at life in a glorious amber stupor, when she had leaned against the gasoline roses and fallen out that window herself? No, no, no, no, no. Did you know why?

Because you hated taking out the trash, you thought, where you'd run into the landlord, who always smelled faintly of something that fattened the acids in your stomach. Then you'd have to bend the corners that were crumbling with mice and mold and shadows and—whisperings whose subtle fires were enough to melt the cartilage from your ears. And if you survived that, you'd have to open the door and face the brokenness of the eternal Brooklyn street.

All of this to toss rotting oranges, or riding an eight-second one-way elevator? I don't know, Ma.

You had since learned to tuck a famous smirk within yourself. "No," you said. And she, lit like a fuse, burned with loving maternal frustration. You suicidal piece of _shit._ You had everything. Why? Because she gave you everything. You had time, you had youth, you had money, you had a home, you had schooling, you had shiny new things every year. Sure, you lived in a crap apartment on the sunlit side of the lower West. But that was only temporary. But, but—there was always a_ but _with one of your mother's wondrous spiels—but, little baby Dallas, but you were _rich._ How could you possibly want more?

You knew the answer, but not in your mind. It burned from the depths of your toes to that crown of snow that had never laid quite right on your head. It pounded the walls of your lungs, rattled the prison bars of your ribcage. Yet you could never say it, never open your mouth and release it. Part of you thought that it would target your mother like a bullet. Another part of you thought that it was a grandiose idea, too above her to mention. Still a deeper—wiser—part of you kept your silence...for the sake of silence.

Your mother's eyes flared upon you. You must have looked like a little demon in her eyes, with a sharp, knowing face; with small, pale eyes too heavy for black and too light for blue; with short, solid limbs; with a flat white line for a mouth. You knew you looked just like your father. You often didn't know if that was cause for concern or pride. Looking up, you glanced at his picture hung upon the mantle. He, too, held in his eyes that smirking look she loved...or despised.

You looked back at her. You couldn't help but notice the reflection in her eyes distorted you—made you smaller. You were a speck, a flare of brilliant turquoise, drowning in the blue brightness of her anger.

You knew she had wanted someone else instead of you. You knew she wanted a boy who had been like one of those roses on the windowsill—big, red, happy, fragrant, warm. But she got you and you got her. And there you were: small, pale, cold, silent, smirking; smoldering like the heart within a long candled flame.

**xXx**


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: Thanks for the review, Caroliners. :)_

_—Disclaimer: I don't own The Outsiders.  
>—Possible AU. I haven't decided yet.<br>—Rating may go up.  
><em>  
><strong><br>Chapter Two.**

_According to Newton's Third Law of Motion, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Figure B says kiss off, kid, I got here first; therefore, Figure A belts him a good one._

**xXx**

There isn't a whole lot you can say to yourself and still say it's the truth. You might say what's true isn't, or maybe that it doesn't exist. Either way, you're fucked.

The sink at the back of Merrill's is where it all swirls together—the bits of hate for yourself wedged in between the regret and the self-pity, as well as the obsidian of your blood thrown in for good measure. You can't drag yourself up to look at yourself in the mirror. The lights flicker. Another fly dies. It's fried right beside you on the windowsill with its little legs sticking out and convulsing. You can see it, but you don't want to. You roll over and crush an imaginary bug with your fist. You fucking hate bugs.

You don't want to see your reflection. You don't know who'll be looking at you next, pointing out your darkest sins and putting them in the pristine spotlight.

You know the light'll fry you.

Tim Shepard smirks at you. Johnny's face, at once hard and scared and forgiving, pulses in your brain. Your mother's blue-eyed frown is seared in your thoughts; her eyes melt into Sylvia, who tosses her soft bronze head back and laughs at you. Buck's throwing your ass out for bouncing him again. The fuzz is shouting at you, and your father's voice echoes in them. _Put your hands up where we can see them, hood, you'll never amount to anything..._

_Lord_, you think, stumbling onto Tim's bed—and then, a second later, the pavement.

Much like life, time—past, present, and future—converges in one great big vomit down the drain. You hope it isn't true, but it is. You're sinking, feeling more insignificant than a pea rolling in the socket...maybe this time you can drown without reemergence.

There is a rush. Oxygen tumbles like a tide in your brain. Smells like lavender.

When you're high on that amber-cased bottle of life, it's much too easy to think of all the people you've crushed. So you think you're the big man; but let me tell you something now, now that you're crumpled like a doll under that streetlight—you ain't no goddamn Hamlet.

Now it's years ago. You've got a train ticket. One-way. You glare at the women in the beige pea-coats who look at you wrong. _Say no to them kind of girls and keep on walking_, your mother always said.

Night walkers. Delicious irony resides between your teeth as you smile at your ticket. Good one, Ma.

The platform's slicked over with some oily sheet they call snow in Brooklyn. The bottoms of uptown loafers tread the tile with black ice, and even the cleanest spot in the city somehow seems dirty to you. You wish the two men standing in front of you would move: they're choking you with the stiff stench of oil and leather. You squirm slightly. Although you resisted her other notions, your mother instilled in you a lovely feeling that you could never be clean enough. And anyone else? Lord, scrub those dirtbags _down._

That's why, years later, you knock three teeth out of a guy at the candy store. They say that kinda stuff's got some Freudian basis to it, Oedipal complexes and all that shit. You say it's a much simpler cut. You, Figure A, want the stiff, Figure B, to move over. According to Newton's Third Law of Motion, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Figure B says_ kiss off, kid, I got here first_; therefore, Figure A belts him a good one. Figure B is spilling his counter-reaction all over the register. Thus, Figure A gets to move up in line.

Simple as that, motherfuckers. You don't need all these child psychotherapists running around telling you why you do what you do. Your mother did enough of that for you. She never knew why you had to run out and bust windows in liquor stores at three in the morning. Was it because you didn't have enough things to do to keep you off the streets? Was it because you had an inherent need to bust liquor stores and stumble in and cuss your own mother out? She never knew; but you did.

You just did.

That's what you're doing at the bar: throwing darts at a map on the wall. The great green United States is spread out before you like a ready woman. You throw another one at the wall as the other drunkards wink at you through the smoke. An interested murmur arises. The first place you hit is Indianapolis.

_Golly gee._

Cleveland.

_No._

Detroit.

_Shit. Left arm's off. Give me 'nother one._

Your aim gets a little lower as your BAC skyrockets; and you don't know how, but three days later you're sittin' by your little lonesome on the next train out of the upper West. Because you're not entirely awake yet, you don't know where you're supposed to get off. You can't sleep an eyeful. You've got an ache in your brain enough to take down an Asian elephant.

You blink, and think very briefly upon your mother.

Anywhere but here.

**xXx**

Not too cold here. Flat land. Bunch of trees backdropping against the endless starry field of the sky: it's the first time you're introduced to Tulsa. Can't say you're terribly impressed, but it was either this or Detroit.

You rip off a piece of rusted chainlink and wave it at some blond collies, telling 'em to scram. And you don't mean the dogs, either. Hick-_town._

A kid rides up beside you on a motorcycle. The roar of the engine splits some nerves down your back—you're starting to sober up—and you jump up a little. You glance at him over the top of your sunglasses.

You nod, and he nods, too.

So you keep on walking.

He starts trailing you on the bike, flaring the engine every time you step on a crack in the sidewalk. God damn, talk about annoying. You start to walk a little faster. He's chuckling at your back. Then he cuts around you and nearly rams himself into the fancy mulberry tree you just passed, blocking you off.

You throw down your jacket. He smiles at you; his eyes are two dark blue stones embedded in his face.

"Appears you're on the wrong side'a the street, fella," he says.

"And you came alla' way to _the wrong side'a the street_ just to tell me that." You snort. "Didn't realize you was really that dumb."

He says: "Get on."

You blink.

A silver-white flash later, and you're standing throat-to-throat with a six-inch switchblade.

"I ain't sayin' it again. Get on or get gutted, hood."

You stare at him for what must be an eternity. Then, with some strange force stirring within you, you smirk at him. It's the first time you express any notion of outward friendliness. It's also the first time you've noticed he's got very dark eyelashes.

You don't know how you know, but it certainly won't be the last time you notice.

He must think you're crazy. You want him to. If he thinks you're crazy, he'll prove you right and drive off like all the others had. You can't get any more rides and it's safe to say you're getting a bit feral in your appearance. You look like a hood, which, in loving terms, is just another word for a victim of a depraved environment, a voice with no sound, a child much more intelligent than society would like.

You know what's next, as if you've scripted it yourself.

He lands a good one right to your jaw.

**xXx**

"See those kids?"

You squint at the dark cluster of blue at the end of the street.

"Yeah."

"Socs," the kid says, and merges into traffic after a hard left across some rustic railroad tracks. You grimace in the wind, wondering what your spit might look like splattered on blacktop at forty-five an hour.

"The hell is that?"

"Nobody," he says. You swear you could feel that fucking smirk crawl up the sides of his face now. "They're nobody."

"So you just told me a bunch of _nobodies_ were gonna stake me with a busted pipe."

"Nope," he says, gunning through another red light. "Just said that to see if you were still payin' any attention."

You mutter something to yourself.

"What?"

"You deaf? I asked you what your name was, shitface." This isn't true. You said, _What's your get-off, shitface?_ but you figure it's better to let things slide when the guy you're talking to is operating a 200-pound GTO death machine.

"Shepard," he says. "What's yours?"

Pause. You say your father's name. Your father separated from your mother—your mother's name was Renfield.

You still think enough about her to say _Winston._

It will haunt you for the rest of your life.

**xXx**

"Can't believe it don't got _Dead or Alive_ written above it," Tim says, smacking you with the newspaper.

You flip him off with your good hand as he turns to leave. "Well, just 'cause I'm on the lam don't mean you can't come. Fuckit, Shepard, why am I telling you all this shit? You prolly told 'em yourself. Get outta here, you motherfucker. Just don't be a stranger, huh?"

Then, slowly, he turns around on his heels.

"You're already strange as they come, Dal," he says, lifting an eyebrow at you."You can't get no stranger."

Your lips part, and he stares at you, his eyes glinting hard and blue.

Congratulations. You've just cracked a smirk yourself.

**xXx**

Years later, Tim Shepard, you find, is very practical with his fucking. Very efficient. And so are you: you just didn't know it before. You could almost say it's the same connection you felt with Sylvia, just tensed-up and bruised-up and banged-up and banged-around. And you love it. He knows you and you know him. You don't wait. You don't think. You're not in love. But you love it.

You think a _damn_ or two as his mouth slides hotly over yours.

Then it's lights out.

**xXx**

_—I fixed the grammar errors. Whew!_


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three.**

_He suddenly seems dangerous to you._

**xXx**

There's friction in the place where you used to be blind. There's sparks flying inside that void you called your mother—but now instead of illuminating the dark of her shadow, you're blinded even more by those sparks. What are they? Where do they come from? They flare seductively, teasing you, then dissolve at the fringe of your mind, which frustrates you to no end.

Fuck that. You got better things to do.

You thank Tim Shepard's service by slashing his motorcycle tires a week later. A pride of people come and hail the new phenomenon around the watering hole. _Dallas._ Your name is a poison, hushed among them. Silence. A silence transmitted only by the dark flare in their eyes.

You savor the silence with a middle fuckin' finger.

**xXx**

You let dumbasses think what they want. You're not in the business of pushing dead philosophies through their thick skulls. You had a home, it broke, you left. Case closed.

Somewhere in the back of your mind the image of the kid on the motorcycle burns. You don't know why it does, or even what his name was. It doesn't seem too important right now.

"Hey, New York."

You turn around.

The kid's got back-up. About four or five of them. You glance behind them. You've crossed the tracks; you suspect that you crossed right into their territory.

He's got a steel baseball bat flung across his shoulders. The others seem like something you remember cut out from another scene in New York. You release a light, tired sigh. All the gangs have the regular molds. The good-looking kid. Two of 'em. The short kid. One. The fuckup kid. You imagine there's one. The brawny kid. All of them. The brainy kid. Just the leader. The Scottish or Italian or Jewish or wherever-the-hell-he-comes-from kid. Maybe there's two of them, if the kid on the left squints the right way.

If you're lucky enough, you've got a wallet chain, and maybe a broken bottleneck, if they let you break for it back some thirty steps.

You don't know why shards of ice are stabbing your gut. It's too nice a mornin' to kick the bucket, you think. But a glow like that could see your severed head with auroral indifference. The Earth turns and it turns and it turns. Time pushes on with regard to no fuckin' man.

Likewise, the blue fog in Brooklyn cast illusion over the city. The morning sun is supposed to be a shield. But you were young then. You'd thought differently on reality's mode of operations. You'd seen a woman shot while she was holding her infant son, her empty body tossed down the steps of the apartment building bathed in the glow of a kindly sun. You'd cried. Last time you did.

He's wearing a _Fuck you_ kinda smile today. You reciprocate.

"Hey there, New York," —he grins and flicks a spindle to the opposite corner of his mouth— "seems you slashed my tires."

You nod accordingly.

"Know what that means?"

You try to speak, but it's been two days since you've last spoken, and the words rattle an empty venom in the desert of your mouth.

He drives the heel of his steel toe into the soft crevice between your ribcage—that wide, unencumbering spot where it seems all the air in your body resides. You land on your haunches with a solid _thup_, red puffs of dust collecting at your legs.

The others jump you. You know the procedure. If you curl up into a ball, it'll only fuel them more. Make 'em hungrier. Better to give them their money's worth than be devoured. Somebody's gonna get tired and knock it off eventually. The unknown variable is time.

Two minutes. Three. A bike chain rips through the skin of your forearm. You punch that kid stiff in the bottom lip.

Five minutes. Seven.

Ten minutes. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. You don't mean to, but you fall forward. Dust collects at your palms, your arms, your pillars. You can't quiver now, you've got to get up, got to show Mr. That-and-a-Can-of-Fucking-Beans you don't fall over and die like a puss...but the pain in your arm blazes, screaming for your attention.

You look up; and in the morning sun you think you see him close, assessing you. He's probably checking for a pulse. You don't like the way the hairs on the skin of your neck bristle as his breath brushes into your ear.

_Pretty-lookin' kid._

You hear the voice come in so low it rushes in your ear like a cold dark tide, sweeping all other thoughts away. It is a mutterance, a venom, a curse; but the poison lay in the fact you're sure it came from him. And suddenly you feel like a nine-year old prisoner again, shivering in a cell not of your own design.

The inside of your mouth gushes blood. Rusty, salty blood. Like licking a rotting steel pipe. The red quivers down your chin, staining the white porcelain of your ruined virgin face. You spit at him through the clouds of a swollen eye. No fucking martyrs here, buddy.

Wait—what was that?

"He knows," he calls out. The others, bloodied and satisfied, disband.

Then, larger than the morning sun, he looks down.

"Your name ain't even Renfield, you liar."

You don't know it yet, but you'll spend the rest of your life wondering how he knows that.

**xXx**

You run. You don't know where you're going, but you want your legs to carry you as far away from this shithole as possible. Your heart is a small bird set afire, slamming itself against your ribcage.

_Pretty-lookin' kid._

You'll never hear him say it again. But it will turn around in your mind, dancing always on the precipice.

You step inside the nearest building and resist the reflex to suffocate.

"Hey, you! Yeah, you, you don't belong here. Scram. I don't serve to no minors. Got blindsided by a clothes-cop last week. Get out." You roll your eyes as the bartender, a cowboy with crooked teeth and wiry blond hair, pronounces _get_ as _git_.

You slip him the last one hundred bucks you have, and the cowboy learns to shut his trap real good.

**xXx**

You aren't in the business of learning names. You can barely remember your own. From a few patrons you learn—again—his name is Tim. Tim Shepard. But this time it has a venom, a fire, a poison, a purpose. They say it with a revered quietness. You think briefly of New York. Last time they said someone's name with that much quietness the FBI blew up the cad's house.

You smirk as you raise a can, which gleams an unearthly ruby in the neon light.

To Tim.

_Whoever the fuck he is._

**xXx**

You know you see him again, maybe a month later. His gaze follows you from the front porch. His eyes are nails, driving shards into your brain. Your heart is a hammer. He might figure you're a glutton for punishment, or just a dumbass. You run the same risk either way.

He descends the stoop like a cat.

You smile.

_You know better_, he says. His voice holds no warmth. But it holds no ice, either. Earth. Earthly. Perhaps soil, or even stone. A mine buried underground. Calm like a bomb.

You nod.

_I know better._

**xXx **

One week later, Tim preaches to you the fuckin' gospel.

_You talk funny._

_I don't talk funny. You talk wrong._

_Say drawer._

_No._

_Say it. Say the word drawer._

You know he's poking around for that inflection that will undoubtedly point to your New York origins. You suspect he might even be able to sniff out which borough. _Drawer. Drau-err. _How do they say it? Your mind tries to find the correct equivalent._ Draur._

_Draur. _Brilliance.

_Say Draur_, you say to yourself. You look up to speak, then stop.

He suddenly seems dangerous to you.

_Pretty-lookin' kid._

This notion of danger ignites your brain, striking it against the rock and setting the entire whetstone aflame.

You smile.

_Drawer._

**xXx**

_No. No. No_, you think. _Don't do that_—

The inside of the house is empty. Foreclosed. Mother couldn't be bothered to pay. Everything he knows will be packaged and sold tomorrow.

Each Shepard child, you find, has his or her own way of coping with hardship. Curly leaves and doesn't come back until he's conquered the demon, red-faced and happily walking into walls and tables. Angela plays the Oedipal card and nutures her emptiness with mommying whatever boy she's lucky enough to meet.

Tim just looks at you. Nothing else. He stares a hole through your brain, at someplace between your eyes. You mutter something at him as you chew on the end of your cigarette. _Don't blow yourself to bits._ You wonder what's so fascinating. It's just you.

So you stare back. You notice a few things when you stare. His eyes got a little purple rim to them. The corners of his mouth tighten when you look at them. The shape of his nose. A faint shadow of a philtrum.

A scar, running down the contours of his face. Your fingers swell with the notion to touch it, to examine it. But you ain't like that.

The eternal whisper-thought becomes a shrill in your skull: _pretty-lookin' kid_.

_Pretty-lookin' kid._ He's said it; he's said it; he can't take it back. But he could tell you he's a mass murderer with a bomb pack strapped to his chest, he couldn't make you feel any more on edge. He don't need to.

You inhale. At first it's smoke, beer, the rain falling down the windows, dammit.

Seven hours later it's his scent: Sweat mixed with grease and that faint muffled sweetness you get when you press your face into a blanket and can breathe in nothing else.

_Pretty-lookin' kid_. Some other thoughts are added with them, fueling him, fueling you. _I could lookit a kid like that. I could fuck a kid like that_.

_I could l_—

"Don't do that, Tim," you say.

_Don't do that._

The echo pierces the dark ether.

The rest is silence.

The clock ticks. Quarter after two. Rain rolls like a fog down the cold glass. You blink, unable to feel anything but a smothered heat below your waist, like a spark that has flared and died within you.

Two-twenty one.

It's already an eternity waiting for you out there.


End file.
